Organization

CONCEPTUAL COLLABORATION

Yvonne Gebauer

Singer

Baritone

Yoshiaki Kimura

Macchiavelli

Conductor

Alexander Kalajdzic

Stage director

Nadja Loschky

Set designer

Anna Schöttl

Costume designer

Katharina Schlipf

Dramaturge

Anne Christine Oppermann

Tenor

Alexander Kaimbacher

Egmont

Soprano

Dušica Bijelić

Clara

Evgueniy Alexiev

Herzog Alba

Mezzo-soprano

Marta Wryk

Ferdinand

Iris Vermillion

Margarete von Parma

Lighting designer

Johannes Paul Volk

Theater Bielefeld

Others

Bielefelder Opernchor

Orchestra

Bielefelder Philharmoniker

German

Bielefeld

Germany

Stadttheater

Egmont Jost

Public

Approved

Opera in fifteen scenes / Libretto by Christoph Klimke with the collaboration of the composer / In German with surtitles

Under the reign of Emperor Charles V, the Spanish Netherlands flourished, trade and culture prospered. But then came the Reformation, Charles V abdicated, his son Philip II tried to use the means of the Inquisition to bring the "renegade Dutchmen" back to the "right faith" and plunged the country into a war that lasted 80 years and thousands of people should cost lives. In 1775 Goethe wrote a tragedy based on the historical figure of Lamoral von Egmond, the governor of Flanders and Artois. Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his famous incidental music for Goethe's tragedy Egmont in 1810, and this in turn prompted the Theater an der Wien to commission Christian Jost to compose it on the occasion of Beethoven's year: Egmont as an opera with musical reference to Beethoven.

Christoph Klimke's libretto and Jost's multifaceted score combine to form a dramatic poem: the inevitability of the fatal development is evident from the start, the very intimate, personal nature of the love between Egmont and Clara is eloquently expressed in key quotations from Beethoven's letters the "immortal beloved". Between the hard pace of the power-hungry, downright bloodthirsty Duke of Alba and the suffering of the Dutch, represented by Egmont, Jost's music repeatedly illuminates the vision of freedom. Hope and horror on both sides manifest themselves in Alba's son Ferdinand, who holds the future in his hands.

English

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew

Ensemble